A Common Language
by tasteofhysteria
Summary: Rather bored of watching England and America continue to play games with each other regarding their relationship, France makes a rather worrying insinuation to set the whole thing into gear; this is the result. Also known as: That one where they Get Together .


AN: Co-authored with thestorytherivertold (she writes the most fantastic England in the history of ever)! Obviously nothing belongs to the two of us, blah blah blah.

_Boxing Day, 2012_

Arthur was hardly the sort to overreact.

Or rather, he liked to think he wasn't, and really, France so dreadfully prone to dramatics and whinging and that dreadful 'I know something you don't know' attitude that made him so unbearable to deal with in the first place, and Arthur really hadn't the slightest why he was putting any thought into it.

Likely, Alfred had simply misplaced his copy of Call of Duty Three: Murderous Rampages or whatever the devil it was called, and, in a terrified frenzy, had called nearly every nation he could think of.

Really, there was absolutely no reason to be concerned. None at all.

—Except, perhaps, that he'd not been called (immediately) as captain of the search squad. Likely simply a communicative error, he assured himself, and so he ceased his pacing (had he been pacing? He hadn't noticed) and sat himself resolutely onto his easy chair with every intention of sleeping the day away.

There was absolutely nothing to be concerned about and that was final.

Roughly five minutes later, Arthur was hailing a cab.

(Because he was a bloody moron and he'd tear France apart for this, but also because neither he nor three altoids couldn't quite shake that unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.)

The flight was long and uncomfortable and he tried several times to contact Alfred via cell phone (despite the constant whinging from the unattractive stewardess) but to no avail and this was all very trying and he was far too tired and irritated that his Boxing Day had been ruined to think much more than "I'll beat the boy bloody for worrying me so, ruddy nitwit".

It had taken far longer than he'd have liked, given the flight time and the absolutely dreadful cabbies in the South and his cumulative exhaustion, but Arthur could eventually be found striding to the forefront of Alfred's small home (hardly pausing to notice the lovely scenery) and nearly tearing the hinges from the frame.

"ALFRED?"

Alfred himself wasn't exactly sure when this became A Thing, the whole Right-The-Hell-After-Christmas-Cable-Horror-Movie-Marathon. Twenty six full hours of nothing but cheesy CGI, corn syrup blood, canned screaming, and predictable cheap scares, and Alfred still hadn't been able to pull himself away from the couch for anything more dedicated than a hurried trip to the bathroom or to the kitchen, throw blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a protective cocoon as he glanced suspiciously into the dark corners.

(Forget going to bed; the hallway light had gone out three days ago and he hadn't remembered to change it. That was just ASKING for trouble. Better safe than dragged into the pits of Hell like Dean Winchester.)

He sat transfixed, watching the drama of some Japanese horror that he'd forgotten the name of, leaning forward as he watched the quintessentially clueless virgin heroine creep around the corners to her supposed doom as the quiet wail of a violin built up in the background, warning…warning—

The front door burst inward with a deafening bang and a shout.

Alfred fell from his perch on the sofa with a loud thud and a startled yelp, his can of Coke going flying and hitting the floor, spreading its dark liquid contents over the floor like a bloodstain.

Arthur, to his credit, had been expecting to find Alfred hurtling from room to room, the house in an absolutely terrible mess, and various bowls of cheap ramen noodles to be splayed across the clutter with offending vivacity. He was not, however, expecting him to be spread-eagle before the sofa and covered in a suspiciously dark liquid.

For a split second, his body felt frozen in place (and yet uncomfortably warm, all the same), his joints locked in position despite the desperate screaming from his brain to get the fuck over there as quickly as possible. Indeed, it was almost as if his insides were attempting to make the bodily translation of their own accord, physical manifestation be damned, and a decidedly unpleasant emotion in the pit of his stomach could only be considered the precursor to collapse or perhaps violent drunkenness.

How precisely he managed to get from one side of the room to the other, he'd never quite know, but he was aware of the simple fact that were he to be correct in his assumption- and he refused to finish that thought even subconsciously, because dramatics aside he was very much understanding in that moment that his heart was currently wrapped in some sort of afghan and not moving.

What happened next was clearly the result of a sleepless ten hour flight and holiday stress and nothing more.

"Oy!" Shaking a limp body covered in something sticky was hardly the best move if one had their safety concerned, but Arthur was far beyond logic at this point in time and thus began frantically vibrating like a rag doll. "Get up, you moronic oaf-"

Oh.

Those blue eyes (were they always such a colour?) were very much alive, actually, and despite the relief he felt, he was currently covered in Coca Cola.

"God damn it all, Alfred, are you hurt?" He immediately began a-not-so-cursory yet no less frantic observation of Alfred's general figure in search of anything that could be considered a bother. "I rushed over quite quickly for you, don't you check your bloody cell phone?"

His voice was shaking with exhaustion, not relief. Quite obviously.

"What-the-fuck—" was all Alfred could manage while being shaken quite furiously. (Somehow, it put him in mind of martinis and 007s but that probably had a lot to do with the sleep deprivation, too much Alicia Keys, and sudden exposure to English accents from both the BBC channel and having the real thing in person here in his living room trying to give him Shaken Baby Syndrome or something).

"Am I what—no, quit it England, what the hell—" he complained loudly, the rote habit for situations like these when a reaction of England's left him completely bewildered, batting at the Englishman's hands and grimacing when all he really managed to do was to soak himself more thoroughly in soda.

He squinted up at England's blurry face, trying to define the precise not-emotion there (because Strong Feelings About Anything In Particular was not England's cup of steaming Earl Grey) and finding it difficult with his glasses having gone flying to…somewhere. With the force and momentum he'd had falling from the couch, they might've ended up in Oz for all he knew, despite this not being Kansas. Probably.

"So wow hi nice to see you too and thanks for kicking my door in, saves me the trouble of deciding whether or not to remodel and yes hi that is my face you're touching, what…are you doing, exactly. Here, I mean. In my house. Y'know. Stateside."

It was bad timing, with Matthew's words still fresh in his head, Coca Cola sinking into his floorboards and sugarcoating him when he himself wasn't all that sweet, with the TV blaring piercing screams being prematurely cut off via some gory end in the background. This was fucking embarrassing and God knew that England had seen him at worse, but still. Fucking _still_, he thought he was too old for this kind of stupid shit to keep happening to him.

He could feel his ears getting hot, a precursor to the vivid blush he'd never been good at willing out of his face; so he cleared his throat and grinned, pushing sticky strands of blond away from his face and tapping out a rhythm on the back of England's hand with his thumb, just as a distraction.

"I mean, hell, you didn't even knock," he taunted lightly. "S'not very polite."

Given the bewildered and mildly disturbed tone of Alfred's voice, he was _not _in any form of trouble and by natural order of operations France would be in desperate need of a safe house within the next few days. Not that a safe house would do him much good when Arthur got a hold of him, he thought savagely, refining plans involving a good many blows to the absurdly arrogant nose and a mercy killing of anything with a designer label in the entirety of France's wardrobe. He'd absolutely no qualms with drugging, glassing, and canoodling with any and all potential guards he'd face.

Self-made promises of future violence aside, Arthur was still rather put out in that his jumper was absolutely soaked with pop (it'd never come out, that, this was wool) and even more so by the fact that he was currently clutching The Boy to him as if he was on Death's brink.

Alfred certainly looked confused by this development, eyes wide and shocked and his thumb tapping sporadically against the back of Arthur's hand. Without conscious thought, Arthur fixated on that palm, the quick movement of Alfred's hand against his, and really far more comfortable than it really had any right to be-

And then he realised aforementioned palm was still resting on Alfred's face, and he jerked away as if he'd been burnt. Clearing his throat, he glanced behind him to note that the door had been torn clear from the hinges-goodness, that was awkward, had he really been in such a hurry?- and winced.

This was going to take quite a bit of explaining, none of which he particularly felt like doing at the moment and all of which would be very painfully awkward.

"Yes, right, er…" and he cleared his throat once more, becoming ever more aware that he was absolutely soaked, "Well. It would appear there's been a minor miscommunication. You appear to be alive and as ridiculous as ever, for instance," he added, an absolutely horrid attempt at levity.

"Do stop your blinking, it's most- oh, right, you're blind as a bat without your spectacles, aren't you, right then, let's find them-"

He made to straighten Alfred's now-drenched throw in some misguided attempt to set things back to some semblance of normal only to realise that the man was rather undressed and covered in some sort of sticky substance.

He also realised that this suited him very well, and that he didn't mind looking nearly as much as he should have, and that Alfred without his frames was actually a sight very much fit for sore eyes. (Or perhaps simply fit.)

And then it occurred to him that he was still holding on and he immediately set about looking for the damned glasses, the quicker to get a move on.

"Er- mind turning that off, pet-" and he cursed inwardly, because he was evidently very bad at not being absurdly obvious, "That is, as charming as various Japanese characters screaming while being brutally murdered may be, I've not quite the stomach for it at the moment. Long flight." Finally managing to brush against the slim metal frames, he polished the lenses with his jumper habitually before handing them back. He managed a (mostly natural) grin.

"Don't have any tea, do you?"

England had pulled away with a speed that was almost offensive; hell, it wasn't like Alfred himself smelled bad or anything. He pulled himself mostly upright with a quiet "heave-ho" and stared at the blurred outline of England bustling around like a flustered hen, nose wrinkled and squinting.

"England," he said plaintively, "what are you doing' here? S'like…some kinda holiday back on your side of the pond so I dunno what kinda communication coulda gotten fucked up unless you were seeing, like, smoke signals from the barbecues down in Florida or something."

(He paused for a moment, pondering that. Floridian barbecues. The fine art of barbecue, as done by _Floridians_. Ha. _Ha_. No. That was like asking Yankees to do [any kind of] casserole right. It was just impossible.)

He accepted his glasses with as much dignity as someone half-naked and covered Coca-Cola could, sliding them on (and rubbing surreptitiously at his ears, where the blush had only intensified from an offhand "pet", goddamn it all). He cleared his throat nervously, sensing the beginnings of something painfully Breakfast Club creeping up on them.

(He tried to ignore it. He couldn't. It was exciting, a little, in the worst and best way.)

"—'course I got tea," he responded archly. "Hell, they'd tar and feather me and send me down the rail if I didn't. This is the South, y'know."

The sight of a fake smile on England's face (and that was sobering, to know he'd seen enough of them of the infamous 'No I Beg Your Pardon I Do Not Smile All Willy-Nilly' practitioner to know the difference between them) had his arm shooting out to catch at the hem of the Englishman's sodden sweater before he even realized what he was doing. Of course, his brain stuttered to a halt when he did.

"…uh," he said intelligently. Breakfast Club. _Breakfast Club_. All he really needed now were the fucking hightop sneakers and he'd be a shoo-in (no pun intended) for Most Awkward Fucker In The Country.

"Why doncha just—sit down and stay awhile, huh?"

Smooth. Excellent recovery. Goddamnit.

"…aaaand you can, y'know, tell me why you're here. And why you felt the need to bust my door in. Aaaaaand why you were actin' like I'd just up and died or got maimed or something," he continued pointedly, tugging on England's sweater pointedly. "By the way, I ain't dead," he added, as if it needed more proof.

It was rather a good thing his back was turned, because Arthur wasn't sure he'd have been able to help the helplessly affectionate smile otherwise. "Yes, yes, a holiday rumour of your imminent demise managed to ruin it for me. I only just managed to punch the lights out of two cabbies," he continued, grinning wryly. "I was hoping to break last year's record."

He clambered to his feet, glancing downward with dismay. He'd been partial to this particular jumper and was hardly chuffed to see it covered in dark brown stains, but he supposed he'd simply have to break out the vinegar and have a go at it before chucking it in the bin. He almost considered removing it from his person then and there, the better to examine it- but then, there was already a half-naked man in the room, and he didn't quite trust himself to remain upright were he to add to the equation.

In point of fact, he was already unsettled by the draw Alfred had on him, considering this was hardly the first time he'd seen the man exposed (and when, for fuck's sake, had he ceased to be The Boy and started to be The Man?) but then he was slightly more unsettled by the fact that his eyes were so disarmingly clear. Perhaps they were clear in that he understood what he saw there, or perhaps he didn't at all and the thought of Not Knowing and Not Understanding was what drew him in the first place.

Perhaps it was both.

Regardless, he might have expected to be nervous, or awkward, or mortified, even, but he was none of those and had he been of simpler mind he might have blamed it on being old and worn and cynical, but in truth he'd never been quite so young. And so, rather than feeling a pang of fear or shock when Alfred made to pull him back, he felt calm. "Do be careful there, you've already caused me to stain it properly."

And so he mussed Alfred's hair, pulled the jumper over his head, set it aside, and sat himself upon the sofa and when he met Alfred's eyes, felt a strange but welcome aura of-

Not comfort, not quite. It wasn't a feeling so much that it was an absence of feeling, but there was something there, and by God, he was making far too complicated than it needed be. Always had, truly, when in reality it was the most uncomplicated thing of all.

"I suppose we could blame that all on France, couldn't we," he began, and he had to take a moment to chuckle, because for once France _might _have done something correctly after all. "Blasted imbecile insinuated that you were in some sort of bother. I, having nothing better to do than to fling myself at various public workers, of course rushed to your aid."

He shifted, resting his arm upon the rest and laying his chin upon his knuckle, and tried very hard not to appear like some sort of childish lovestruck lunatic (which he was not, even when acknowledging that one of those adjectives might be correct.)

He _was_, after all, England.

"Yes, it's rather a good thing to see that you aren't. France had has his share of fun tugging at my various strings, I'm afraid…" he trailed off, clearing his throat. "He elected, as the French are wont to do, to take the most inefficient route to awaken me to a hitherto ignored fact. Regardless, you're safe and sound, yes? I'm free to go and bash his head in with one of his beloved heels?"

It wasn't comfort, no, but it wasn't absence, either. It was… rightness.

"So France was fixin' to jerk a knot in your tail, what else is new?" Alfred mumbled from his place of being still seated cross-legged on the floor. He gave one last tug on England's hem without really know why (except for maybe knowing that he could, without fear of reprisal) before letting go and allowing his hand to fall into his lap, interlacing his fingers together as his gaze fell from England's to the floor.

Each word from England was like another pebble dropping into a pond. And what the ripples they caused were shoring up wasn't like…missing puzzle pieces, not exactly, but more like being given the parts of an equation needed to fill out a particular formula that had previously always come out to the solution of undefined, undefined, undefined.

Frowning, Alfred stared at the floorboards, idly noting where one was developing a hairline crack.

"Y'know," he began, tracing the crack with his eyes, "that's a hell of a lot of trouble to go through on a rumor from _France_ and a coupla missed phone calls. Not that I don't appreciate the effort, for sure," he amended hastily. "But still. S'bit much, y'know? I mean, I'd expect it from Mattie maybe but he's my brother and required by common decency and very deep passionate fraternal love to make sure I haven't fallen out of a deer stand and busted my head open. Again. But you're not required to do that. We're just friends. Kinda. I guess I could see you maybe calling up the embassy here to send someone out to check on me or whatever, but doing it yourself—it's not exactly a quick little trip to the corner Texaco. That's thousands of miles, a pretty price on a ticket, and fucking hours in an economy seat with no leg room."

He paused and licked his lips, thinking of what next to say.

"I guess it don't make much sense to me for you to do all that," Alfred said finally. "Or maybe it makes a hell of a lot of sense and Matt was right and now I'll owe him like twenty rounds at the next bar night. Or hell, maybe it's just a British thing that y'all do these big old gestures for nothing."

He leaned forward a bit, folding his arms over England's knees and resting his chin atop his wrist, staring up at the Englishman with a thoughtful expression.

"But that's not really the kinda thing you do," he continued. Alfred stopped again, pausing to shift his weight forward a bit.

"So I'm kinda prone to thinking and you can, y'know, take this however the hell you want, that you did all this because your 'hitherto ignored fact' was that you, um…liked me."

He went silent for a long moment, chewing anxiously on the inside of his cheek.

"…suits me just fine either way, I guess," he muttered. "I'm sort of stuck on you anyway."

Arthur blinked, entirely at a loss as to what precisely 'jerkin' a knot' in one's 'tail' would entail, but it seemed to have vaguely sexual connotations. Given context clues, however- and really, he had to make splendid use of them to decipher what Alfred was saying at any given time- he could determine that he…most likely wasn't insinuating that France had persuaded him to make the trip with the admittedly lackluster use of his penis.

…Not that the idea of France stooping so low (or on bent knees) was of any surprise, but he liked to think Alfred was suggesting something else. Being toyed with, perhaps. It seemed likely enough, and France was hardly on his mind at the moment.

He was much more occupied with the fact that Alfred was evidently in the midst of debunking and unraveling his story, and that he was growing unsettlingly close to the truth with every passing word. Why precisely this ought to bother him, he wasn't sure, only that being so quickly and effortlessly dissected was alarming, to say the least, and that 'We're Just Friends' bothered him far more than it really had any right to.

….That, and the idea of Alfred bursting his head open multiple times without informing him was…disconcerting. His eyebrows furrowed, and all jokes aside- (well, we can't quite do that, can we? It certainly explained a lot. Alfred's consistent use of sentence fragments and the term 'like' was clearly a symptom of severely addled brains. Yes, moving on)- he wasn't sure he like the idea of his falling from multiple tree limbs to the extent that Matthew rushing down to see him would be a common occurrence.

"You do know," he began, only to pause and allow himself a wry smile. Alfred, to his credit, was far more intelligent than anyone seemed willing to admit, and he didn't bother stifling an affectionate chuckle. "It wasn't quite the bother-" he added, only to be stopped again by the troublesome fact that there was absolutely nothing he could say that would denounce anything that had been said, because there were very few people on this earth for whom Arthur would have dropped everything to go and see.

Of course, this sort of content calm was a bit disturbed when Alfred elected to make Arthur's lap his personal armrest.

For quite some time- seventy years, thereabouts- their relationship had harboured a very specific set of rules for the Accepted Forms of Affection, and this had certainly not been one of the actions often performed (likely because for a brief moment Arthur had a bit of difficulty keeping his mind on the conversation.)

(He might have been a nation, but he_ was_ a man.)

If he had been expecting any sort of terrifying, alarming, or life-changing statement, 'I think you like me' was certainly not one of those things and so quite without his permission, he began to laugh.

"_Like_ you?"

Still grinning, he prodded Alfred's chin upward (since we were here, that was.) "Believe me, Alfred- I've done much more than _like _you. I'm hardly a little girl in the school yard." He hesitated, just for a moment, and let his hand fall limply back to the arm wrest. "I…"

Now he was here, and this really wasn't as simple as he thought it would be, or indeed, how it ought to be. He cleared his throat, and for whatever reason, felt a discomfiting warmth behind his ears that was obviously a sign of his genitals shrinking, because clearly he was twelve years old and of some Romance nation.

He was English, damn it all.

"I…suppose you could say I've been much the same. Assuming, that is, that I've deciphered your nonsense talk correctly." The threads of the sofa were really very fascinating, he thought, and he elected to concentrate more firmly on the fabric.

"I've never been one for talking about this sort of thing- about 'dramatics', you know. I've my books and my poetry and my theatre and that's all quite enough, thank you," he murmured, and almost without noticing found himself playing with a strand of a certain American's mussed and Diet Coke stained hair. "I'm old, and set in my ways, and my way does not involve talking about much at all. I'm British; when in doubt, quarrel and make bitter comments about the weather."

Sighing, he met Alfred's eyes once more.

"I'm very much in doubt, and yet not at all. Let's not delve into that, shall we, we'll simply be at it until the wee hours. Best to out- whatever Matthew told you, looking at you now, he was likely right…" Arthur took a deep breath, and then simply let it out in a tired laugh. "Fuck, because there really isn't any one else I'd rather be having this terrible conversation with."

"Well, as far as admissions of adoration go, that was complete shit on your part," Alfred replied bluntly, pulling back. "And I revoke your privilege for 'British Nondramatic' effective immediately because you skipped the fucking pond for no good reason. Besides, this is only as…dramatic as we make it, y'know, so. It could be a low-key thing. Maybe."

Yet knowing the two of them and their shared propensity for drama while wholeheartedly denying it even existed, he quietly held his skepticism in reserve as a just-in-case.

"We probably need to 'delve into it', wee hours or not. We've kind of—" he ran a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration.

"We've kind of," he continued, "played this whole fucking 'all around the mulberry bush' bullshit for…a long time now. Seventy two years."

The seriousness of the statement was ruined by the sheepish grin he shot Arthur's way. 'I counted,' he mouthed silently.

"So begging the pardon of _Sir_ Kirkland and his old set-in ways, but we're doing things _my_ way this time because if we don't," Alfred said firmly, gaining a verbal momentum that seemed to tremor through his body, if his sudden rocking from side to side was any indication, "then we'll be in a situation like this…two centuries from now, knowing you, having this same conversation and putting it off again and again and again and you know, that's time we could waste sitting around throwing fucking 'what-ifs' at the walls and hating each other for making shit so difficult or it's time we could've spent—"

He broke off, subconsciously closing off and unfolding his legs from their cross-legged position, bringing them in close to his chest as he stared at a far wall with a vaguely embarrassed expression.

"—being _happy_ or something," he said in a small but clear voice. "That'd be fine too. Better than fine. And I'm really not willing to drag what Matt said into it like some fucked up high school 'he said she said' bullshit or put this off again because. Well. I get I'm not that old compared to all y'all across the pond and everything, but I'm not exactly _that_ young either."

Slowly, but lacking in hesitance, Alfred turned his gaze back on Arthur, a tired look in his eyes.

"I'm not that young," he repeated, "but seventy-something years is still something I can't just write off as no time at all, y'know?"

Raising an eyebrow, England settled himself more deeply into his seat and regarded Alfred carefully.

"I would hardly classify 'Not Making a Spectacle of Things' as dramatics- indeed, I do believe that would be the precise opposite," he retorted, his thick brows knitting together in what might have been consternation but could very well have been irritation. "'Declarations of adoration' might do a better job of falling under that category."

Speaking of inverse tangents, 'delving into it' was hardly what he'd had in mind, and he groaned before he could stop himself. Temple already beginning to tingle with a slight ache- or perhaps that was his imagination- he felt his inner pocket for a fag only to discover that, much like his sense of shame, he'd left his packet at home.

Bloody brilliant. No wonder he was in such a tizzy.

"I'm not playing games, Alfred," he finally stated, "and I'm not about to 'beat about the bush,' either. We're both too old for that, I think."

Seventy two years, and he'd hardly aged at all. That was a blink, a drop in the ocean. God, had it been that long? Nearly a century?

Really, even if he'd wanted to get a word in- and he didn't, not really, because despite his expansive vocabulary and the plethora of various phrases, declarations, and confessions he might have used and the knowledge that he was the one that fucking created the language, damn it, he'd not the slightest what he'd say- and he couldn't, because Alfred was speeding ahead like a train in the ice.

He looked so tired, Arthur thought with a pang. Far more tired than a man so young had any right to be.

"You _are_ young," he returned, "because if you weren't quite so young, perhaps you wouldn't need to be say….it," he finished, quite lamely. (By God, the man was right.) "You know precisely how I feel, or you wouldn't be here. Or I wouldn't be here. As you so put it, 'It's a bit much'. I wouldn't have come halfway across the blasted world were I to see you as anything less than-"

And, quite without warning, he rose to his feet, the better to pace about the room.

"Ten hours! Ten hours of flight time, ten hours of sitting beside several snoring Germans and listening to a terribly unfortunate looking stewardess and absolutely inedible airline food that I couldn't eat because you wouldn't answer your goddamn phone!" Gesturing wildly in the other's direction, he resumed his rambling with gusto.

"And all of it on a whim, because you _might _be in trouble, because _you _might be in trouble. Do you think, do you really, honestly think that I would have done it for just anybody? Do I need to spell it out? You're bloody brilliant," he added, "Regardless of what you've managed to convince everyone, you can't hide it from me. You're brilliant, and beautiful, and evidently a fucking moron, because if there's one thing I believed in when I was awake on that flight…."

He skidded to a halt, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

"If there was one thing I believed in, it was that I believed in _you_. And, if you'd be so clever as to use that magnificent, brilliant, moronic brain of yours, you might understand that I'd prefer that 'you' to be an 'us'."

Scuttling out of the way of Arthur's path with a muffled "Jesus!" and an awkward backwards crab-walk, Alfred stared up at the pacing Englishman with an expression of mingled surprise and something akin to epiphanic awe.

"—um," he started, scrambling clumsily to his feet (and slipping just a little in the puddles of soda that he really did need to mop up sooner rather than later). "What I'm getting from this is that you think I'm pretty but a dumbass. A pretty dumbass. Bless my heart," he added wryly, slapping a palm against his chest.

"Buuuut if it makes you feel any better aaaand it probably won't, knowing you, at least it was only ten hours and not two or three months like it used to be. Even then, sometimes you'd stay away for a coupla years or so. I missed you then," he said honestly, with forced casualness, "when you'd go. When you were gone. But, um, I was sort a short little brat then so I guess it was…expected, kind of, that I'd miss you."

He frowned at the floor for a moment, hands on his hips and fingers drumming out a slow rhythm against them. "So I guess," he continued, "if you'd skip the pond for less back then, shouldn't really surprise me that you'd do the same now to see if I managed to brain myself yet or not. But hey, at least the inedible food got more sanitary over the past couple centuries, am I right?"

He turned his megawatt grin towards England, smile dimming slightly and falling away completely when he was greeted with the other man's back. He took a step forward almost without realizing, then another, and another, until he was close enough to feel the heat coming off of England's body, bringing with it the faded scent of hours-old cologne.

Slowly, hesitantly, like a cartographer charting new and unknown territory, he lifted his arms just slightly to wrap them around Arthur's waist, hands clasped loosely over his stomach. He liked the feel of Arthur, he decided. He was not at all soft like a girl; he felt solid and strong beneath Alfred's arms, like a pillar that Alfred could lean on for once instead of always being leaned on himself.

"I don't figure," Alfred said quietly, pressing his forehead against the back of England's neck, "that you'll have to spell much out. Nat King Cole did good enough on that, y'know?"

Arthur snorted, his lips forming his traditional smirk as his eyes found the ceiling and examined the hairline cracks deep within the plaster. Pretty, indeed- it was easier that way, was it not? It would be ever so simple, he thought, were he still capable of muddying attraction with affection and pretending that inexplicable (and yet entirely explicable) desire to be around him was merely an appreciation for blue eyes.

Yes, it would be _easier_, but it had been seven decades of assuring his subconscious of such imagined distinctions and it seemed his subconscious, having spent several long, laborious centuries aiding Arthur in his multitudinous delusions, had finally thrown up its hands and called bollocks. That simply would not do; he'd long endured a sort of uneasy relationship with himself that he would agree to accept emotions only at a surface level.

(And then inevitably resort to writing a plethora of letters that would never be sent, tucked neatly away in old shoe-boxes that would never be seen, by now coated with a thick film of dust and grime. 1998, he thought, had been much more difficult than it really had any right to be.)

His thumb and forefinger tightened round the bridge of his nose and his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the light and sound and _thought_ that wouldn't bloody shut up and now there was Alfred, before he could catch his breath.

The scent of leather and grease and everything Arthur had come to associate with some semblance of comfort grew nearer and nearer, and Alfred was close, much closer than he'd ever been before. For the first time, his instinct wasn't to push him away, but to stand his ground and wait and maybe even let himself be happy.

Perhaps. All he had to do was turn around- or he could continue standing here like a statue, marble and cold and far closer to crumbling than met the eye, and pretend none of this had happened.

"Do you know, quite a lot of this could have been avoided had you simply answered your phone," he murmured absently, and quite without his permission found himself tracing delicate circles around each of Alfred's knuckles. "I'd still be in London, likely unconscious in my shorts and watching another year go by."

"But we'd be lost in the same cycle then, wouldn't we?" His voice, at first quiet, now inundated with assurance, grew stronger with his decision. "We've been at this far too long, love- 1964 was far too long ago."

He wasn't _quite _sure how precisely he made the decision to turn round, to say nothing of how he executed it, but Alfred's warm breath was gone from his skin. Instead, he was looking into his eyes- not through them, not above them, but for once he was looking and letting himself look and letting himself like what he saw there, because he understood it and he _didn't_ and that was really all he needed.

Fuck it all.

All of his breath left him in a sigh that was part relief and part utter exhaustion as he firmly pulled Alfred forward, and pressed his chapped lips to his and it was hardly perfect, between the sharp stubble and the likely lack of teeth-brushing and the simple fact that Arthur had never quite been practised at holding back, but it was very _them_ and his brain was certainly not tuned in to anything at the moment but the very simple fact that Alfred was very, very close.

(And yet not nearly close enough to make up for years apart.)

The science-oriented part of Alfred's brain that was still partially functioning (the rest of it had immediately shut off in a wave of disconnecting synapses) would rationalize, later, that there was no logical reasoning behind why a common form of physical contact would be this disorienting, why a simple meeting of skin would send every endorphin center in him exploding into fireworks like a Fourth of July parade.

Another part of him was sending up fervent prayers to God that this wasn't just some "European thing" or whatever (or, even worse, an apology and a goodbye).

The rest of him had simply stiffened in shock for a split-second before going muzzy and indistinct with a warm, sharply fizzy feeling, like drinking too much soda on an empty stomach and being too happy with the sugar rush to really feel the burn of it.

His fingers tightened reflexively in the wrinkled shirt fabric at the small of Arthur's back, loosening the firm hold of the starch that had once creased it into perfect straight lines.

_(And that, in its own way, was very much like Arthur or so Alfred privately believed: he schooled himself into stiff façades before gently collapsing into undisciplined lines of comfortable softness.)_

A moment passed and he was granted the space to breathe, just slightly, just enough that he could still feel the warmth of Arthur's skin nearby and take in the scent of faded cologne and filtered airport oxygen that seemed to cling for hours, the fine fabric beneath his callused fingers. But he stood there for another moment, eyes squeezed shut while he took inventory of what he could be certain of in _this_ moment, in the subsequent, in the one after that, and all the ones following.

The answer presented itself mutely, without fanfare, as a simple and quiet statement of undeniable and irrefutable fact.

In response, his eyes shot open and he stumbled back a step, which was precisely the _wrong_ thing to do and he knew it immediately, surging back forward to frame Arthur's face between his hands, feeling the light stubble and warm skin brushing against his palms and knowing, somehow, that they'd managed to do something right for once.

"God," he choked out over the lump his throat.

"God," he said again, quiet and just as fervent.

"_God_," he said once more, whispered and tender before he was kissing Arthur again or being kissed, and it didn't matter.

It was like tectonic plates shifting, two far-distant shores meeting with a deafening crash of light and sound and beautiful thunder, the sun breaking through the clouds with an orchestral murmur of strings touching bows lightly like a butterfly lit upon a flower, two bullets in mid-air striking dead-center and ricocheting away from each other, leaving behind only a sharp tang in the air that meant something incredible had happened.


End file.
